Sega Holdings, the U.S.-based arm of Japan's Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. (6460.T), said the acquisition of Secret Level Inc. was part of its effort to focus more on the U.S. and European video game markets.

Sega buys Secret Level for $15 million - Yahoo! News

Interesting piece in the Times last week about the SATs. Seems that kids with disabilities can get extra time to take the test. But the problem is, most kids who even learn about the dispensation process are upper-crust kids from prep schools. So they gin up bogus justifications for extra time — like having ADD or some shit. And it’s costly to apply for extra time. Generally, you need a physician or a shrink to write a recommendation (which they don’t do gratis) detailing why extra time is necessary.

The article notes that we can’t eliminate the extra-time option altogether; kids with real disabilities — like blindness or prosthetic hands – should be accommodated. But the abuse by kids from the Upper East Side who want an extra couple hours because of, say, sugar addiction — that shit has to stop.

The proposed solution is just removing the timed aspect of the test. That is, let every kid take as much time as he or she needs (within reason — maybe no more than a day).

The Fifth Column » The Time of Test

SEOUL -- Hines Ward, the MVP of the Steelers' Super Bowl XL win, has received another honor.

On Wednesday in South Korea, the country of his birth, Hines became an honorary citizen.

He wept as he apologized for previously being ashamed of his Korean heritage.

ThePittsburghChannel.com - News - Ward Receives Honorary South Korean Citizenship

Studies in the 1990s estimated the cost of medical care for sleep disorders at $15.9 billion, the report said. In addition, it said, fatigue is estimated to cost businesses roughly $150 billion a year in lost productivity and mishaps, and damage from motor vehicle accidents involving tired drivers amounts to at least $48 billion a year.

Chronic Sleep Problems Affect Millions - Yahoo! News

The Rapport technology, known as Kilocore, will initially be aimed at portable applications like digital video delivered to cellphones. According to Mr. Singer, reconfigurable logic promises better energy efficiency, which has become a watchword in large computer data centers as well.

Mr. Singer said Rapport, which raised $7 million last year and is based in Redwood City, Calif., licensed a computing design from researchers at Carnegie Mellon.

That approach has permitted Rapport to create a chip with 256 computing elements that can be configured on the fly to adapt to different software problems. A follow-on version of the chip will have more than 1,000 computing elements and will contain a version of I.B.M.'s Power PC microprocessor.

This sounds familiar...

I.B.M. to Work With Start-Up on Chip That Uses Less Power - New York Times

As mentioned, 100% of 2 and 3 letter domain names are taken, but it starts to free up as the number of possibilities expodes, all the way up to 63-character domain names. The most popular registered domain name length is actually 11 characters long, tailing off from there.

11 characters seems weird, until I look at the last three domains I hit:
- livejournal.com
- memestreams.net
- itsyourturn.com

Still seems weird.

Dennis Forbes - Pragmatic Software Development

Earlier this week, he stopped by at the Business 2.0 offices to show off what he had been working on for past few months. Accompanying him was Mike Cordano, a former Maxtor sales guy. Mike is the CEO, and Patel is the chairman of the Fabrik, a San Mateo-based company that plans to reinvent the world of storage. But before we started talking about Fabrik, I asked them how big did the One-Touch business really get. hundreds of millions, they claimed. That’s not bad, enough to take what they had to say seriously.

GigaOM : » Fabrik of Storage

A DEVICE that can pick up on people's emotions is being developed to help people with autism relate to those around them. It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed.

One of the problems facing people with autism is an inability to pick up on social cues. Failure to notice that they are boring or confusing their listeners can be particularly damaging, says Rana El Kaliouby of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It's sad because people then avoid having conversations with them."

Media Lab smoke & mirrors, or actual development?

New Scientist Tech - Technology - Device warns you if you're boring or irritating

Here's an awesome Flickr mashup. In fact, one of the best we've seen. It's called Bubblr, and it lets you create a comic strip using Flickr photos. It's built using Flash from the looks of it, but it's a very nice implementation that uses a minimal amount of controls.

Monkey Bites

Why is it that I can buy a CD and legally listen to its content on my iPod, but the DVD I legally purchase cannot be watched on my video iPod?

The Big Picture: Wired: How to Put Your DVDs on Your Video iPod